In 2002 Laura founded Local Ocean Seafoods, a sustainability-focused seafood restaurant and fish market in Newport, Oregon.  After 20 years of tremendous growth and continuous change, she sold the company into employee ownership, as an Oregon Stewardship Trust.  In 2022, she launched the Yaquina Lab, a food hub that provides shared space and equipment for small fishing and ocean-minded businesses.  She also started the Central Coast Food Web, a nonprofit with the purpose of improving access to local foods, capturing, and retaining seafood economic value, increasing ocean literacy, and supporting climate friendly food solutions.

 Laura has lived and worked in coastal communities her whole life, from her Washington commercial fishing family roots to her service as a Peace Corps volunteer in The Philippines.  While earning her Master’s degree in Marine Resource Management (Oregon State University 2000), she fished summers for King salmon and Dungeness crab on the family boat.  She has been actively engaged in fisheries science and policy throughout Oregon and the region. She is the board chair of the Oregon Ocean Science Trust, a trustee for the Oregon chapter of The Nature Conservancy, a board member of the Oregon Coast Aquarium and has served on the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife commission (2010-2016).  When beach life becomes too damp and mossy, she and her husband like to escape to the deep desert reaches of Joshua Tree and the Wild West.